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Initial Thoughts on the Y Combinator Angel Investor Documents

By Ryan Roberts

I wanted to give my initial thoughts on the Y Combinator Series AA Angel Investor Legal Documents that were officially released late last week. I plan to write a document-by-document breakdown in the coming week:

Term Sheet - August 26th
Stock Purchase Agreement - August 27th
Board Consent - August 28th
Stockholder Consent - August 29th
Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation - August 30th
Investors’ Rights Agreement - August 31st

But until then, the following are my general comments about the documents and are geared towards those readers thinking of using the Y Combinator documents on their own:

“Neutral” is all about perspective. Entrepreneurs are often worried about being taken to the cleaners by their investors. Thus neutral legal documents appeal to the startup entrepreneur. But in order for an entrepreneur to be taken to the cleaners by an investor, the investor or investor’s counsel must be sophisticated regarding these deals. That isn’t always the case. (I have experienced situations where both investor and investor’s counsel were unsophisticated about these types of financings…and no I don’t have their contact information for you.) So keep in mind that you could be giving away terms instead of getting better terms by using these documents.

Delaware corporation and not [Insert state and type of legal entity here]. There’s a reason why the documents have a Delaware corporation as the default entity. A Delaware corporation is really the only option if you want to do these types of financings and move on to venture capital. I have written a few posts about “Why Incorporate in Delaware?” and “Why a Corporation for Venture Capital?” explaining the subject. Of course, the Series AA documents aren’t for venture capital financings, but the underlying reasons for using a corporation exist in an angel round.

Read between the disclaimer’s (many) lines The lawyers at WSGR didn’t add the legal disclaimer at the top of each document just to run up Paul Graham’s legal bill. Sure, WSGR doesn’t want to get sued. But implied by WSGR not wanting to get sued is that people will take these documents and royally screw up.

And don’t think only those that do large amounts of editing to the sample documents will screw up. Legal documents must reflect the deal. You could be in a bad situation if you sell (or believe you have sold) your investor one thing and the documents reflect something different.

No legal document is dispute-proof. Don’t assume that you are immune from disputes because you used “neutral” document or “boilerplate” provisions. If I created a dispute-proof legal document, I’d be (a) the first lawyer in the history of the world to accomplish that, and therefore (b) be on my way to Boracay for a 12-month sabbatical.

And finally, I think you should take a look at this article at the Startup Company Lawyer. It is written by Yokum Taku, a partner at WSGR (the law firm that wrote the Y Combinator documents), and therefore he will have fantastic insight regarding these documents.

Next - The Y Combinator Term Sheet

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Full post as published by The Startup Lawyer on August 24, 2008 (boomark / email).